Thursday, July 03, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

Law enforcement officials say the proposed policy would help them do exactly what Congress demanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Root out terrorists before they strike.

Although President Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would allow the FBI to consider those factors among a number of traits that could trigger a national security investigation.

As an upstanding citizen of UMOUR I whole heartedly agree with this approach. To date, law enforcement has itself been handcuffed by waiting for terrorists to act and actually perform an act of terror. This new set of laws will give US law enforcement the ability to move before something actually happens.

In fact, the only way to truly combat terror is to focus on what ultimately causes a person to become a terrorist in the first place: Radical Islamic sites, bomb making manuals, subversive literature, and even those cultural elements that would predispose someone to terrorism. Anyone accessing such materials needs to be treated as a terrorist before they can do any damage to you or me or our children (will somebody think of the children?).

In fact, let's just realize that anyone accessing the wrong kinds of information or is exposed to the wrong things will inevitably choose to perform terrorist acts, because why would they be accessing those materials anyway?

We can take it further, too. We know that in certain cultures, suicide bombing is acceptable. Thus, anyone from those cultures should be treated as a terrorist because they will have a high enough predisposition to performing a terrorist act that it is not useful splitting hairs about when and where they will commit it.

Is this racist? Absolutely not. Remember, we are not targeting races, but cultures. If those cultures tend to fall along racial lines, that's their problem. Let's round 'em up and stick 'em in a whole Gulag of Guantanamos which we should build posthaste on every isolated Island we control.